


snowcap meltdown

by halfwheeze



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gift Fic, M/M, Minor Meltdown, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:28:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24709120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfwheeze/pseuds/halfwheeze
Summary: Sokka has a minor meltdown and Zuko always knows what he needs.
Relationships: Aang/Ty Lee (Avatar), Mai/Suki (Avatar), Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), Toph Beifong/Katara
Comments: 5
Kudos: 206





	snowcap meltdown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lightningsmcqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningsmcqueen/gifts).



> for ali - i hope this helps.

Rearranging a room in a royal palace is not a task for a water tribe chief with a tendency for the anal retentive. It should probably be left to professionals, but instead, there’s only Sokka, and that is only going so well. 

Nothing is right and everything is wrong and nothing is going well and Sokka is going to rip out all of his hair and maybe lay on the floor for six to twelve business years. He’s snapped at two house servants, something that he and Zuko  _ never  _ do because they’re nothing like Zuko’s father, but he can’t stop himself from being angry and making jokes that are just this side of too cutting to be funny, and nothing is okay. The blunt edge of his nails bites into the heel of his hand and he places his forehead against the wall. He’s just about to bang it against it before he hears the door open, the sweep of robes against the floor. He would know that walk sleeping, and he knows that someone has gone to get Zuko because he can’t even have a meltdown by himself. 

"I've commanded armies in a war where we were outnumbered a hundred to one. I can't be freaking out because a fucking _ chair  _ is in the wrong place," he says, his voice croaking out of his throat as if he’s spent hours screaming. He hasn’t even let himself raise his voice, not even to yell at nothing at all. Zuko snorts. 

"You can, actually, and it looks like you are. How about we go sit in another room for a little while, just to help you get the picture in your head better," the other man says, and Sokka tries to knock his forehead against the wall, but a hand comes between him and the sweet release of impact. 

"I have the picture in my head, Zu! I just... can't make it happen," he admits, gritting his teeth. 

“Sure you can. _ After  _ a break.  _ After  _ we have a talk. I haven’t seen much of you today and I would like to share a meal with my husband. Okay?” How much they’ve changed Zuko, how much he is no longer the scared, angry boy that no one could bond with, no longer the boy who alienates himself from everyone. Zuko asks so little of him, how could Sokka say no? His shoulders fall from around his ears and he sighs, letting his tension out even as he can feel tears still brimming, ready to fall. When he turns, Zuko’s arms are already up and open, so very open, and Sokka falls against him despite himself. He crashes and crumbles against Zuko like the crashing of the tide that Sokka can’t feel within himself like Katara can, but he still knows the sound. 

He falls against Zuko and that’s what coming home is. The warmth of a firebender’s skin, the smell of smoke that follows him like a cloud, hot hands on Sokka’s neck and shoulders to welcome him in.  _ That  _ is home. 

“Sorry,” he breathes out. He can’t say things seriously, not loudly and proudly like Katara or Zuko or Aang or even Toph these days, he needs the humor. He needs the mask or he’ll crumble apart without it and he can’t bear it. He can’t bear to know who he is without it. That probably says a lot about him. 

“For what, snowcap?” Zuko asks, stroking a hand down the back of Sokka’s skull. It had been a joke when Zuko had first started calling him that, a rare taste of Zuko’s playful side that had stuck around when it had colored the dark of Sokka’s skin a deep red. It always makes Sokka smile, even now. 

“Doing this. Being this. Me,” he says, an explanation without explaining anything, but Zuko always understands him. 

“Never sorry, Sokka. Never sorry. Everything else will work out, even if it takes more than today. Everything will be okay,” Zuko rasps, near the cusp of tears himself, and they cling onto each other, unabashed and in love and horribly, horribly vulnerable. Terribly, terrifyingly known. It might not be the worst thing. Zuko holds him until the sobs run out and the stress takes him from the world of the waking. Sokka isn’t awake or aware when he’s carried to their bed, placed there like something precious, tucked in like the child he was hardly allowed to be, that none of them were really ever allowed to be. 

He wakes up with his little sister hovering over his face and screams at a decibel he wouldn’t admit to under penalty of Zuko divorcing him. Katara and Suki are giggling and Toph is full belly laughing and Aang and Ty Lee are high fiving, messy little menaces that they are. Mai is lingering in the back like she always does, but she’ll perk up when Sokka drags her into conversation about blades of various flavors later. They’re all  _ here.  _ He hadn’t realised how much he missed them until they were all in one place. 

And Zuko, of course, is right there. Shy smile just barely half crooked, looking just like the day that Sokka married him, and he wants to propose all over again. Zu always knows how to take care of him. He’ll never know how to thank him for that. Katara climbs into bed with him and Toph does the same on the other side and it’s warm in a different way that Zuko is, but it’s good. It’s so good. His little sister and her little shit girlfriend and their friends and the love of his motherfucking life and the goddamn chair that still isn’t in the right place, and maybe it never will be. Maybe Zuko will get someone to throw it out the window just so Sokka can watch it crash to the ground or maybe they’ll give it to someone or maybe it’ll just suddenly somehow disappear and Sokka will never see it again. 

For now, he’s going back to sleep, too many people in one bed, not a single fuck given and all the love Sokka has ever felt, right here. 

**Author's Note:**

> love you, sunshine. always here for you.


End file.
